


If I could call you half-mine

by OnForeboding



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Angst, IssuesTM, M/M, past trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-01
Updated: 2018-05-01
Packaged: 2019-04-30 18:22:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14502831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OnForeboding/pseuds/OnForeboding
Summary: No need to account for all my life's events in the context of a story that somehow defines me.But it does.And it did, just as those words exited his mouth.





	If I could call you half-mine

He’s pulled from sleep by the faint echo of a voice. He blinks a few times, eyes adjusting to the darkness in the hut. There’s a whimper from behind him. Silver.

He turns around in the bed and finds his form. He’s trembling. A sound much more like a scream comes out of him this time. James instinctively reaches out and strokes Silver’s arm, soothingly. “Sssssh,” James whispers, shifting his body to envelop Silver’s from behind.

Silver startles awake and unconsciously pushes him off, nearly elbowing James in the chin.

“Hey, hey, hey...” James says, holding up his arms. “It’s okay.”

Silver only retreats further away from him on the bed. He sits up and holds his face in his hands, breathing hard.

James gets up and crosses the darkness of the room to locate the water pitcher. He slowly walks back with the glass.

Silver is leaning against the wall now, an arm resting on his raised up knee. He is calmer, then.  
James passes him the glass of water. He climbs back into bed but maintains the distance. James understands the need to recoup.

“Your leg?”

“No. It’s—” Silver closes his eyes, hard. He brushes his curls back from his face and drinks deeply. “It’s fine.” He slides off the bed and nimbly hops to the table in the centre of the hut. He sits facing away from James.

_It isn’t important._

There is some integral part of Silver he refuses to share with James. Regardless of Silver’s embellished speech on those cliffs, no amount of half-shared truths could obfuscate that.

And it has stung like salt water on an open wound every day, since he’d suddenly become aware of it. To have ventured so far out into the open only to be left without a counterweight to his shared burden... He feels off kilter. Foolish. Stranded, after having so blindly handed over the last and sharpest pieces of his wreckage.

What does it say of Silver? What does it say of him? Why this, when James has held all the other inflamed and exposed parts of Silver in his hands, their blood dripping to his elbows? Can there truly be a bond between them if one remains opaque to the other? At this stage? There are no more curtains left to peel back in James. Silver has come to know who he was, is, and will be. Can a gift so freely given demand something in return?

_I don’t want you to know mine._

Silver probably does not judge it wise to impart a potential tool of his destruction to one such as him. He retains enough clarity still to know that. Would James ever use it? Does he wonder or is he certain? James thinks on the dangerous shallows in the waters beneath their floating feelings. Would he? In truth he might. That’s who Flint is. From the moment he meets someone it’s all a series of moves to get them to where he needs them to be. He’d done it to Silver before—wielded fundamental truths of Silver’s nature against him. So much of their reality now was a result of that.

Had he not accused Silver of doing this very thing? Of slithering into the cracks of James’s story to protect himself? Can he fault him then, for not sharing? It is unwise to ignore a pattern. So many have been undone by his hands...

_There is no story._

Without relevance, he’d said. But what of meaning? You are who you were. James knows this better than most. There is _always_ a story. James yearns to possess it, cherish it and polish it in his mind, fit it into to the colourful mosaic of Silver’s existence. We are all but stories.

Truth is, the more he spins it in his mind the more he feels there were more lies told on those cliffs than truths.

_All that is relevant to be known._

A far pettier side of him reminds him that he is not the sole contender for this elusive knowledge. What of her? Who knows what he has whispered to her amidst the comfort of their embrace. But James remains alone in his dependency. In his… vulnerability.

He had not been angry, no. He had been _terrified_.

_You know of me all I can bear to be known._

“Why won’t you tell me?”

Silver’s hunched form tenses and he straightens up slowly. He does not turn. “Please... I told you. Let this one thing go.” His voice trembles.

James sighs. He’s suddenly cold and empty, so he pulls the unused covers over his lap. “You asked me if there could still be trust between us... I have bared myself to you. You were forced to live with my ghosts; my demons. You told me they shaped your reality. When you asked me to make them known to you, I did.”

Silver leans with his elbows on the table once more, his hands gripping the sides of his head.  
A deadly silence falls between them. If James is not careful a finality will settle on this; but here, in the dark, when he cannot gaze upon Silver’s face and this troubling thought will not leave him, he has become reckless with this fragile thing between them.

“Can your demons not do the same to me? Am I to venture forward blindly?” Flint says, quietly.

Silver’s deep sigh wrecks through his body. “Have I not given enough?”

In the dark, James sees the wisp of quick movement and then a loud bang of wood against the bed-frame. He knows what lies on the floor. The artificial boot had been discarded by the table earlier in the evening.

“Is that not enough?” Silver yells.

His voice rings like a canon in the silence surrounding the Maroon camp. He gets up quickly and finds his other means of walking.

James wonders briefly if he’ll just go out there naked.

Silver does.

James knows he won’t go far like that. He knows this was above all else a display. Another distraction.

He also knows Silver will not leave for a far less pedestrian reason. Solace. He will soon come back in, lie next to James and gently insinuate himself back into his arms. James will surrender. The remainder of their sleep, if any, will be as restless as their spirits.

Morning will come and they won’t speak of this, under the glint of the bright sunlight in their eyes.

_Can that be enough?_

 

**Author's Note:**

> This is a song prompt fill, posted [here](https://parrotsinlondon.tumblr.com/post/173483518739/song-prompts). But above all it's something I always meant to write about those cliffs. 
> 
> As always, thank you for your help, my dear, dear [Linz](http://linzorz.tumblr.com).


End file.
